“together”

Homo Urbanus

Last year marked the first time in history that the majority of the world lived in a city or town. Humans are no longer a rural species, and every day at least 190,000 people are added to urban areas. But of the greater than 3 billion urban dwellers, at least one billion live in a slum.

Here is an excellent essay I found last year in PLoS Medicine about slum health, which aptly cites the definition of a slum as an area of “concentrated disadvantage.”

Homes I visited last year in Langas, outside of Eldoret, Kenya

The tin roofs of Kamukunji, outside of Eldoret, Kenya

My contact, the Millennium Cities Initiative social sector specialist here, is the lone UN-HABITAT officer in Lilongwe, the UN’s human settlements program that is charged with providing “shelter for all.” They have several initiatives dealing with the urbanization, and by extension, the urbanization of poverty. I am excited to be involved in the start-up of the Millennium Cities Initiative, the urban counterpart to the Earth Institute’sMillennium Villages project (UN Millennium Project), working for solutions in urban development.

Urbanization, in my mind at least, represents peoples’ search for something better. People tend to migrate into cities or towns from rural areas in search of economic opportunities. And in my limited experiences in Africa, I think urbanization is generally a good thing. However, I’ve also seen some pretty dire consequences of urbanization, particularly the rise of slums and the birth of street children, not to mention problems with water, sanitation, pollution, crime, and disease. It worries me that with urban development, poverty in some countries may in fact get worse before it gets better…

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2 Responses

Interesting take on the idea and motivations behind urbanization- a search for something better. I cannot imagine, though, that all, even most, people leaving rural life behind believe their rural lives were not good. Like you said, moving into urban areas does provide more economic opportunities (aka MONEY), which we unfortunately must admit are the key to ‘better lives’ in terms of attaining the necessities to live a quality life. But, as a lover of the great outdoors and seeker of simplicity and self-sustainablitity, I would wonder if many of those leaving rural country lifestyles behind do it out of necessity, leaving behind a lifestyle they love yet cannot continue because of lack of substantial income. The “something better” part comes in the form of money, not lifestyle….just a thought, maybe I’m wrong…

I just want dearly to hold out for our rural communities and refute the idea that urbanization is the best choice. We MUST continue to seek ways to provide more economic development and opportunities for our rural communities, abroad AND in the States. Quick tidbit, poverty is more persistent and devastating in our rural communities than in urban ‘slums’ according to the policy reform group Bread for the World. It is an unfortunate fact that our rural communities made up of honest, hard-working farming families who play a role in feeding our country are consistently neglected and left searching for ways to feed themselves. I hope to God that corporate farmers will not take over and push all our rural families inward to urbanization.

My phrase, “in search of something better” was, unfortunately, talking about money… and not lifestyle. Urbanization certainly means different things in different countries and contexts, but my frame of reference here is that urbanization involves families moving away from subsistence farming on which they can no longer subsist, and into cities or towns in search of jobs. So indeed, this largely is a search out of necessity.